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September 01, 2012

Joshua Foust's Perfectly Sinister Post on Pussy Riot

Joshua Foust has written a twisted post on Pussy Riot on the Atlantic, in which he accuses the intellectuals and celebrities defending the Russian punk rockers jailed for two years for "blasphemy" as getting it all wrong and doing it all wrong in their defense . Ultimately, he then undermines the global mass movement championing the defiant women, and plays to the Kremlin.

Foust always does that. Criticism of the Kremlin is never his strong suit -- except when he claims to be doing so in a highly specialized sophisticated way -- unlike the wrong and even dangerous way everybody else does! Just as he does in this post. But the net effect is the same: discredit, distract, delegitimize.

He did this with a series of posts on Gulnara Karimova, the controversial and flamboyant daughter of the Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, slamming and heckling the international human rights activists who challenged her and her support of her father's regime, also claiming they were "doing it all wrong" by urging a boycott of her fashion show as a way of raising awareness about child labour in the cotton industry in Uzbekistan. In fact, they were doing the right and moral thing. He was not. This was accentuated by the way in which a year later, he doubled back to criticize her on some things when it became more fashionable, when she was alligned with Komen, the whipping-girl of the pro-abortion movement.

When you get down to it, the thrust of just about every critique Foust makes on anything goes along the same pattern:

"X has got it all wrong; X is in fact in danger of accomplishing the opposite of their purported goals; X doesn't understand the more subtle points that I do; let me set you all straight on the right way to understand this; do nothing except admire my brilliance and don't oppose dictatorships, it's not pragmatic; leave the driving to us."

That's the nub of it on every single post, whether about the war in Afghanistan or counter-terrorism in Central and South Asia or even unpaid internships.

I wondered as I paged through news feeds on my i-phone while traveling who on earth could have a tag line, "Don't Turn Pussy Riot Into Kony" -- and I wasn't surprised to discover later it was Foust.

The defense of Pussy Riot has exceeded any human rights activist's wildest dreams, and even the wildest dreams of any anti-Kremlin activist. All on their own, without any special grant from Hillary Clinton or prompting from the CIA, all kinds of ordinary people and now celebrities are questioning the Kremlin's draconian crackdown on these women who burst into a church and played a raucous punk song, but who didn't damage any property or hurt anyone. They've been sentenced to two years of labor camp.

I've never seen a mass movement like this targeted against a Russian leader since even the days when Sharansky was a watchword and demonstrations of half a million people could gather by the UN in New York for Soviet Jewry. Even then, there was still a sense that it was a niche cause and that the liberals and the cool people still thought we should worry more about "peace" and "disarmament" instead of the human rights of Jewish refuseniks and all the other dissidents in the Soviet Union for every cause.

This time, just about everybody gets it: the Kremlin is not a friend to freedom.

The reason is simple: the case catches at the zeitgeist of the age which is opposing religion -- the same spirit that drives Maureen Dowd to endlessly castigate against the Catholic Church; the mass movements on social media defending Planned Parenthood and denouncing Komen, the Boy Scouts, and Chik-fil-A for their anti-abortion stance and intolerance of gay rights. The world is tired of old men in costumes spouting religious doctrines that they worry will get in the way of their personal freedoms, especially sexual freedoms -- oh, except the old men in Iran or various jihadists and terrorists, for whom they still feel a sympathy as "enemy of my enemy".

I can't remember a Soviet dissident event taking place at ... the Kitchen. That's how cool Pussy Riot is, people crowded into the Kitchen to hear about them! Did Danny DeVito or Madonna ever speak out for a Soviet political prisoner? But they have about Pussy Riot! The cool factor is inestimable! Good!

Because the Kremlin isn't cool, and the persecution of these women, based on old-fashioned and oppressive notions of "blasphemy" and the growing political power of the state religion of Russian Orthodoxy, is all wrong.

It takes enormous amounts of effort to get people to criticize the Kremlin, because they are always available to be guilt-tripped into invidious moral equivalency -- "well, America has terrible prisons, too" -- even though the kinds of activists who have burst into churches in the US have never been arrested or faced anything remotely similar to the public persecution of Pussy Riot.

So now that there is this mass movement around the world, with everybody and his cool brother getting on board to sign a petition, wear a t-shirt, tweet a protest, or even go to a demonstration, Joshua Foust is annoyed. Time to come to the Kremlin's rescue with a cunning sophisticated post!

So in the Atlantic, that's why Foust comes up with this post. He sets the stage by telling us he's aware that Pussy Riot is unjustly persecuted, although he gets wrong that they don't operate from a basic loathing of what Russian Orthodoxy is in Russia. They do. That's how they can be so outrageous. And that's understood. These are not girls who take communion on Sundays, but on Saturdays take part in uber-sophisticated 'propaganda of the deed" work against Orthodox reaction to make nuanced points. They are young people viscerally reacting to the increasing visibility and power of the ROC in Russia, allied with Putin, who has become a symbol of reaction to many in the new generation.

Now comes Mr. Sophistication in his role as Church Lady -- ringing the chimes on Kony -- which wasn't really the awful thing the sophisticates thought it was in the first place and actually exposed the ineffectiveness of the international human rights movement. Then he's fretting about the "methods" these women have chosen -- which suggests that there is some "better" way -- er, blogging? Having private meetings with officials? -- that dissidents should chose:

But the support movement also carries some uncomfortable echoes of the
Kony 2012 campaign and its many less-infamous predecessors, repeating an
unfortunate practice of activism for the sake of activism, of
enthusiastic support for someone who seems to be doing the right thing
without really investigating whether their methods are the best, and
privileging the easy and fun over the constructive.

Kony isn't about neocolonialism, that's silly -- the enthusiasts who engaged in it aren't cunning enough to be "neocolonialists". They're just moral people. They find it loathsome that someone would kidnap children and force them to kill their own parents. That goes against the moral code of every religion and every society of every type. They're right to want to go after the monster that persisted so long with this defiance of civilization. That it isn't perfectly nuanced or is belated as to Kony's location or level of mayhem isn't the point. The point is that the super-sophisticates in human rights groups -- and I'm one of them -- who pursued Kony by writing reports or advocating quietly with ambassadors didn't get the job done, and only this mass petition movement spurred by a video was able to get the Obama administration at least to put some military advisers on the job so that we could understand better the complexities of why Kony remains so elusive and possibly help African governments to catch him -- which is a little bit like the reasons for why Karadzic remained so elusive.

There's nothing wrong with "Western meddling" in pursuit of Kony or any other war criminal. That's not colonialism, it's international human rights. I totally get it that the military aspect of taking down Kony is repugnant and seems "interventionist" -- but...what's the plan to take him down, have Amnesty International perform a citizen's arrest? Of course it's best if legitimate government forces arrest and try him -- let's hope that will be the result. The world is seldom perfect, and the challenge that Kony represents to civilization is unacceptable and it's ok to make a mass movement out of that, you know?

But while Foust is willing to concede that defense of Pussy Riot isn't "neo-colonialism" -- thanks, Joshik! -- he still calls it "commercializing political activism".

Huh?

Frankly, Foust's analysis of Kony is wrong -- which sets the stage for his bad-faith thinking about Pussy Riot:

Kony 2012 took a serious problem -- warlords escaping justice in
Central Africa -- and turned it into an exercise in commercialism,
militarism, and Western meddling. Local researchers complained about it, and a number of scholars used it as an opportunity to discuss the dos and don't of constructive activism.

The "militarism" comes from a) some of the activists posing in the film with soldiers? b) the reality that military, not ordinary police, will likely have to be the forces that nab Kony? What, exactly? Kony is militarism run rampant, but we don't get to counter that, or run the risk of being dubbed "militant" ourselves, eh?

And the "commercialism" seems dubious, given that the people who made the film issued it for free to spread virally and then the producer had his own meltdown and was discredited. Er, did the discussions of scholars about the "dos and don'ts of constructive activism" REALLY have any affect? Gosh, do I go check with scholars when I want to sign a petition against Wells Fargo foreclosing on a woman's home or against the overeach of the NDA? I'm sure there's a more "constructive" way to do this but I just haven't read the right scholarly posts!

Now, Foust will tell us what it really is all about, and it sure isn't feminism.

BTW, we've found Foust to be outrageously anti-women and a fake concern-troll for feminism as well. When he and others made outrageous posts slamming a female Russian reporter who covered the Zhanaozen massacre, feminism was least on their minds. Nor was there any feminism involved in pilloring Martha Brill Olcott and ridiculing her name because they didn't like her views, or heckling and ridiculing me and calling for my dismissal because I stood up for her. No feminism there. Feminism appears only at pearl-clutching moments of "horrah" when Sarah Kendzior is rightly characterized as the "office wife" of Registan for defending not only the odious views of her fellows, but their suppression of critics. Feminism is selective at Registan, turning hot and cold around Gulnara, for example.

And now this:

In Russia, Pussy Riot's newfound Western fans are taking a serious issue
(Russia's degrading political freedoms and civil liberties) and turning
it into a celebration of feminist punk music and art. Feminist punk
music and art are great, but they are not the solutions to this
particular problem, and pretending that they are takes attention away
from more worthwhile efforts. Pussy Riot might have made punk music, but
they got themselves imprisoned for an act of political dissent. Their
unjust imprisonment doesn't necessarily make anything done in their name
-- or, particularly, in the name of their punk music -- a step forward
for Russian political rights.

But Pussy Riot is about feminist punk music and art. Good Lord, they didn't call themselves "Pussy Riot" because they like kitty-cats, yanno?!

In this and many other analyses of Pussy Riot, including Robert Mackey's incredibly thorough (as if he knows Russian and reads Russian blogs!) coverage in the New York Times, there is left out an important part of the biography of the Pussies, and why some more conservative Russians hate them so. Some of them took part in a public orgy to create "baby bears" with a play on the name of the then-president, Medvedev (medved means bear in Russian), where young people gathered to fuck in public and film the proceedings to "make a point".

This was shocking even for some of the beau monde in Moscow and it's often held up by their detractors to claim Pussy Riot is immoral. What they are, indeed, are feminist art punks. It's not my cup of tea but it has a right to exist, and it's interesting that it's taken this method, this way to get world attention to the essential rot in the KGB-agent-run Kremlin and its KGB-collaborating state Church. Kind of like it took that viral video with its simplistic homilies about Kony, when for 15 years, our muted and manicured protests at the UN weren't working, you know?

Now Foust hones his concern-troll hype, casting those shallow star-studded ranks of Pussy defenders for not seeming to care about those comrades of the Pussies who now face much worse sentences and with less attention. But that's always the way. It's that way with every human rights cause. Some people get famous with the cause and some don't. You only hope that the one will help the other. It's no sign of perfidy if somebody didn't hear about Artyom Savyolov -- quite frankly, none of the Pussy Riot women were famous except among a very niche group of conceptual artists in Russia, before all this.

Now Foust twists the knife further, borrowing from his other bad-conscience perspective on the Magnitsky bill -- which he has never publicly supported, and whose sneering critics like Mark Adamonis he lustily defends on Twitter, comes up with the ultimate concern-trolling:

When Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer in Russia who was arrested after he drew
attention to what he says was widespread political corruption, died
from the abuse he suffered in prison -- having never even gotten the
courtesy of a trial, as did Pussy Riot -- there were some peeps of
protest by some politicians but nothing on the scale of the Pussy Riot
movement. Russian authorities acted suspiciously after his death, leading many to suspect they may have had something to do with it.

Magnitsky's death did prompt some movement in the U.S. Congress, where a bill named after him,
which would sanction foreign officials found to have been involved in
human rights abuses, now awaits enactment. It's great that Pussy Riot
can stand in for the regular Russians who face far worse brutality and
mistreatment by Putin's government every day, perhaps drawing some
attention to that much larger problem. But the obsessive focus on these
three women, not for their activism or political dissent, but for their
status as female punk rockers, risks drawing attention away from other
Russian activists or political prisoners and focusing it instead of the
plight of all-women punk bands, which is decidedly less dire.

Er, note that "what he says was" -- to call into question Magnitsky's legitimate exposure of what is well-documented as corruption. Thanks, Josh! And note "peeps" -- although Congress debating a bill is hardly a "peep". And now suddenly, a preoccupation with how Pussy Riot isn't like Magnitsky -- from somebody who has never stood for Magnitsky. Huh? The obsession with these cultural icons who fit the zeitgist is perfectly fine and a boon for the human rights and anti-Kremlin cause; their feminist punking *is* activism and political dissent. Or is ultimately Joshua -- true to form! -- implying that if women make rude and sexualized defiant actions, it isn't "good enough" or "serious enough" to be "political" or "dissent"? Indeed, this is the undertow pulling at Foust's meaning here, and no accident, comrades.

And now, knowing exactly what he's just implied, Foust hurries to put in the counterspin:

That's not to downplay these three women or their plight. Focusing on the spectacle
of Pussy Riot actually obscures the real issues that prompted their
trial in the first place. Pussy Riot are not peasants grabbed off the
road and put on trial for being women -- they are rather famous (at
least in Russia) political activists who got arrested for political
activism. That is a horrible, ludicrous thing for Russia to do, but
making them into innocent everymen misunderstands both their actual
efforts and why they matter.

Well, actually, it *is* to downplay the women, their plight, and their defenders -- missions accomplished, as per usual! And the spectacle isn't really the focus -- it's the excessive punishment and the outrage that is generally the focus, you know?

But Pussy Riot are innocent everymen and their symbolic rage against the state machine resonates as it does at home and abroad precisely for their reason. It's precisely to discount this power -- and this amazing challenge to the Kremlin -- that Foust subtly tries to discount it and then slam us all for "misunderstanding their actual efforts" which, um, only he can fathom.

Now comes the concern-trolls self-justifying coda:

Pussy Riot are part of a larger movement within Russia to demand
political freedom, one that Putin's regime thugs are literally,
physically beating back. American celebrities are right to be outraged
about Pussy Riot's treatment, but it's a shame that so few seem to have
investigated what happens to the activists who aren't Western
media darlings for their all-women punk bands with sexually suggestive
names. Rather than the Pussy Riot trial catalyzing a broader Western
awareness of Russian authoritarian backsliding or even a popular
movement to pressure Moscow to loosen its restrictions, it seems to have
inspired little more in the West than outrage about how sad it is for
some punk rockers to go to jail for a silly little church concert.

But that's patently ridiculous. Foust never cares about the non-media-darlings himself -- he never writes about human rights in Russia unless it's to castigate the intellectuals who are "doing it all wrong".

And wonderfully, people who haven't paid near enough attention to the awfulness of the Kremlin have now viscerally understood the problem via this case and thousands have signed petitions and kept the case alive on social media and even held demonstrations in various capitals of the world. You sure don't get that with the Kremlin most of the time, given the predisposition of the lefty social movements to align with Russia's anti-Westernism!

The Pussy Riot defense *has* in fact catalyzed already a wider movement to challenge the Kremlin -- can you get more visible than a concert by Madonna?! Is that what's really bothering Foust?

American celebrities aren't to be slammed because they never heard of the case of Taisa Osipova, ill in jail, or numerous other cases that only a handful of human rights groups follow. They've "gotten it" about the Pussy Riot case, and that's a very good start. A popular movement to get Moscow to "loosen its restrictions" -- to not punish people so horribly for blasphemy! -- is a good thing that improves the human rights climate for everybody. Such a movement couldn't get started a few years ago for the artists and curator who were castigated by the same protectors of Orthodoxy as the enemies of Pussy Riot -- it was left to only a handful of international groups and local lawyers and activists to defend Yuri Samodurov and others.

And I saw what you did there, Joshua -- writing about "Putin's regime thugs" to bullet-proof yourself against the charge of giving Putin a pass. But never direct criticism of Putin himself, eh? And never for its own sake. Only for the sake of showing how the other intellectuals and social media chatterers are doing it all wrong...

So once again, the pattern. Everybody is wrong, and doesn't get it, thinking this bad thing is bad -- it's bad for another, subtle, more sophisticated reason that only Joshua Foust can fathom! And everybody should stop their silly popularization and shallow take on this case! And ultimately the message is clear: mass movements against the Kremlin aren't cool; they're wrong; they're unsophisticated; why, they even go against the very principles the activists purport to espouse by overshadowing some more serious cases.

It was stock in trade of the KGB's Bolshevik methods to try to get persons of principle to believe they were doing something wrong by turning their own principles against them. And that's why I call it out here when Foust puts up this awful post, awful in the immoral way so many of his previous posts have been.

The movement in defense of Pussy Riot is fine; it is done for the right reasons and the right instincts, the essential rejection of modern youth of the oppressive strictures of religious dogma of the past which are antithetical to civil liberties. Pussy Riot is "everyman" in that it represents many modern Russians who don't want the state involved in their personal lives and want personal freedoms outside the bounds of reactionary oppression that both conservative religion and the remnants of the Soviet state represent. Punk feminism is about politics and dissent and rights, even if it doesn't take the sedate and chaste form that we might prefer it to take.

And Foust has accomplished with this post what he always accomplishes -- discrediting of the intellectuals and celebrities and their mass followers on social media who rightly challenge the Kremlin -- challenge Putin; discrediting of the persecuted women themselves; and then finally his hollow and pernicious conclusion: leave the Kremlin alone, leave it to be managed only by sophisticated senior fellows of think tanks and their friends in the State Department -- only they can do it properly.

I hardly ever comment on your posts about non-vw topics because I usually feel woefully uninformed about whatever the the issue is, but I often feel better educated afterwards, so just wanted to say thanks for that.